Lose Your Mind
by OmNomNomAttack
Summary: "What were you thnking? Trying to do a solo drift? You're an idiot." Chuck held her shoulders tightly as she slumped against the wall, blood trickling from her nose. "I..." She coughed, smearing the blood with a messy hand, "knew what I... was doing." "Like hell you did." Warnings: Angst, Possible Spoilers. Pairings: Chuck Hansen/Original Female Character, Raleigh Beckett/Mako Mori
1. Chapter 1

"_The year is 2017, and here, behind me, you can see hopeful citizens looking to sign up for the Jaeger program with the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. and Sydney's newly established 'shatterdome'_." The reporter on the television smiled out at the audiences in their homes, and a certain little thirteen year old glared at the screen and curled herself into a tighter ball. She ignored the slightly more comfortable lounge behind her in favour of the wooden floorboards, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around herself.

"Elleni-" The voice was loud enough for the young girl to hear it, but soft enough to remain calm, as one of the women who tended the orphanage called out to the girl in front of the television. The girl shifted, pressed her lips together, but didn't turn away.

"El." The thirteen year old cut her short, not taking her eyes off of the screen. "Nobody calls me Elleni but my mum." She said, bitterly. The woman walked over, rubbed a comforting hand over the girl's hair, her voice soft as silk.

"El," El hated the syrupy way she spoke, the way grandmothers talked to toddlers in families, it said '_I'm being kind because you're young and don't understand the world yet_', but she knew the older woman was just trying to help. It didn't keep it from stinging though. "Why do you keep watching these?" The older woman ran her fingers through the child's hair as El leaned against the caretaker's leg. She shrugged, her warm, honey coloured eyes raking over the lineup of people as the voiceover explained that is was a reaction to the increasing number of Kaiju attacks in the Pan-Pacific region of the world. Footage flashed up, a Kaiju (one El had affectionately named 'Hurricane') destroyed the harbour bridge, along with all of the cars on it. El flinched involuntarily, seeing the cars, some whole, some in halves, fall into the water, crashing about the Kaiju's feet, pressed underwater by its steps.

_She could see the gaping, fluorescent mouth of the Kaiju as it tore through the steel frame of the bridge, its long, sharp claws dragging across the tarmac of the road before it was ripped away, along with halves of cars, whole cars and families. She could feel the gut wrenching terror of seeing half of her car plummet off the harbour bridge, her parents still screaming inside, their eyes wide and fearful as she reached out to them, trying to get them back with sheer willpower alone. She scrambled out of the car as fast as she could, snagging her clothes and grazing her knees, the metal of the bridge groaning in protest of holding such a large amount of weight with its primary support missing. She remembered hiding out around the base of her building, knocking upon her door and getting no answer, too afraid to try and force her way in, unable to go back to get her things, unable to move on. She remembered the sirens blaring, the hoards of people yelling and running through the streets of the city, trying to get out of the blast radius when they finally destroyed the thing. She hid in a coffee shop, technically still inside the blast radius, stealing cookies and curling up into a ball of El. She remembered going back to the smouldering wreckage of her old house, the porcelain head of her favourite doll staring at her with one, unblinking eye, her dad's prized model plane in pieces, scattered about the ash before her, warped and twisted from the heat. She stole a gas mask to get in, forgetting about the radiation, not connecting the nosebleeds she would suffer from later in life, to the two days she spent crying in the debris. She remembered someone picking her up, wearing a full radiation suit, carrying her with haste from the scene, lying in hospital beds, the steady beeping of heart monitors, the sad whispers of nurses and mothers, talking to their own children, explaining why El never had any visitors._

_She was ten._

"El, come on, it's time for bed." The caretaker told her, flicking off the television with the remote balanced on the edge of the lounge, stopping her petting of El's chocolate locks of hair. El sighed, defeated. She slowly uncurled herself from the safe cocoon she had created with her own limbs, stretching out and rolling her neck to get the kinks out. She didn't realise she had been sitting there for three hours, flicking through different channels just to see the news of Sydney's new Shatterdome, with all manner of attractive presenters smiling at the camera.

The caretaker placed a comforting hand on her back, leading her through the old halls of the building, past the doors of other sleeping children. El had spoken to them, El had interacted with them, El had helped them with bruises and scrapes and she knew them. None of the other children dreamed of blue jaws and death. None of the other children spent hours a day teaching themselves how to pick locks, or how to fight with knives and fists. None of the other children spent their small allowances getting lessons in martial arts. None of the other children wanted to be Jaeger pilots.

"I'm going to be a Jaeger pilot one day, I promise." Her voice was quiet, too quiet for the caretaker to hear, but it didn't matter. She knew what she wants, she knew that the deaths of those Kaiju scum would bring her the revenge she's always dreamed about. She would split the skulls and bright blue, snapping jaws. It will be the deaths of the Kaijus she dreamed about, not the deaths of her parents.

Elleni Stryker was thirteen years old, and she already lived with blood on her hands and in her heart.


	2. Chapter 2

"So, Elleni Stryker, you are sixteen years of age and are interested in joining the Jaeger program?" A burly man sat behind the desk looked over her papers skeptically. El smiled brightly at him, trying not to grit her teeth behind her lips, hoping that the twitch of her left eye wasn't noticeable.

"Yes, sir." She told him and he sighed, stamping her papers with a bright red date _(July 30, 2019)_. He put them back into the envelope she had presented them in, shoving them roughly, but not damaging them and she grinned, wide and bright and completely at odds with how she felt, her stomach squirming with the lies she rattled off (_yes, she was sixteen, yes, she had guardian permission, no, she did not have any concealed weapons on her_). The envelope was heavy as he gave it back, almost bursting at the seams with papers, and she thanked him, trying to keep up her grin and stop her eye twitching. He didn't seem to notice.

"Go through for a physical, your paperwork checks out." The recruiter told her, his tone bored as he motioned another hopeful forward. The line was very short now, they closed their door for recruits a few hours ago and honestly, not many people were getting through. El bounced down the hall to the medical room, peering through the window with wide, gold eyes. If she was being honest (which she wasn't) she would have told him that she was actually fifteen, but they didn't recruit anyone below the age of sixteen and she couldn't almost a year for her next chance; the orphanage was frankly smothering her now, everyone else was too young or had friends of their own, and El was just a weird constant in their lives. The doctor who was doing the physical checks smiled at El through the panel of glass in the door, going back to talking to a man who looked about thirty; he's sighing and rubbing the back of his neck, shaking his head.

"Now, Mr Robins, I'm certain that with your bad back, you'd be better off helping around town, with your family." The door opened with a slight creak less than a minute after El sat herself down in one of the chairs beside the door. The two stepped out, the woman speaking and the man sighed.

"Thank you, ma'am." He told her, walking away, nodding dejectedly. El noted his limp in on the left barely noticeable, that must have been what had stopped watched him go, El feeling herself buzz with nervous energy.

"Now, papers please." The woman turned to El, smiling brightly and El handed her the papers that had been tucked tightly beneath her arm. The doctor surveyed the paperwork with a careful eye before turning back to El. "Welcome, Elleni." El tried not to hiss at the name. She shut the door once the two of them were inside the room, closing the small shade over the door's window. El stripped down to her underwear and let her body go into autopilot as the woman measured and weighed her and kept asking questions about El's medical history.

"I have the occasional nosebleeds." El grinned, and the woman grinned back, the two of them sitting, facing one another, El clothed once more.

"That's normal. I think you would be a suitable candidate for this position." There was a pause and the woman faltered, her eyes looking into El's and she asked, softly. "You do understand the intense pressure placed upon those within this institute." El nodded vigorously and the woman sized her up. "Another thing, being a woman..." She wasn't certain of how to continue, but El understood. "Can you hold your own against others?" The doctor asked. El's thoughts flicked to the knife hidden as a lipstick in her pocket, the brass knuckles in her bag, it took less than a moment, as well as a small, knowing smile.

"I think so." El huffed out a breath, the doctor analysing her, as well as her smile that said '_I know something funny that you don't_'.

Taking in a deep breath, the woman's smile reappeared within an instant. "Well, you're slightly underweight, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem, just need to bulk up when you get there." El nodded once more and the doctor dismissed her, leading her from the office and clapping her on the shoulder. "Go back to the man out the front, he will give you more papers to sign, and then you can join the other recruits."

The other recruits turned out to be about one hundred people of ages from about twenty to thirty five, with only two other teens, and only six other women. They were gathered together in a side room of the shatterdome, waiting for someone to show them around. El clutched her bag to herself tighter, trying to quell her fight or flight response. _Come on El, you can take this_. Her brain told her over and over again, and she swallowed, standing at the back of the crowd of recruits.

The Shatterdome, everyone soon realised, was enormous, winding corridors, all bland and grey and green, _jesus christ. _The women were so few in numbers that they only needed one corridor of rooms for the seven. El, being the only female teen, was given the single room, single bed, single set of dressers, and she took in a deep breath, flopped onto the bed and its ichy grey blanket, and curled up, not worrying about food being served in the cafeteria for the time being (she was used to skipping meals if it meant more time practicing).

"You are not sixteen." There was a voice at her door and she shot up, hand in her pocket, gripping her lipstick knife. The person in the door looked slightly older than her, a guy with messy brown hair and a grin like the cheshire cat. El relaxed and rolled her eyes at him. He looked at ease in her doorframe, as if he had been there before.

"Oi, fuck off, yes I am." She spat, and he crossed his arms, shrugged and leaned against the doorframe. "Piss off, I'm relaxing." She told him. There was a beat and he laughed. El pressed down the imminent '_Do you wanna fucking go mate?_' bubbling to her lips, like she pressed down most of the things she _wanted _to say.

"No you weren't, you were two seconds from freaking out, how more on edge can you be?" He smirked and El gritted her teeth. It took her a moment to compose her features in a mask of serenity, quiet and unreadable.

"I said_ - Piss. Off_." She said, in measured words, looking him in the eyes. He gave her an evaluative glance and El swallowed, trying to keep her zen aura about her, not the brash, in-your-face aura many of the bitter, revenge driven recruits had.

"Well, you're a good liar. I'll give you that much." He told her, holding out his hand. "I'm Chuck." El looked at his hand as though it was an alien object and he frowned. "You're meant to shake it-"

"I know how to shake hands!" El snapped, striding over to him, taking his hand and squeezing it as hard as she could, breaking her pure aura. She took a moment, while she was inflicting this hand-pain upon him, to recalibrate herself and to slip back into her zen facade once more.

"Fuck." He hissed, retracting his hand from her grip. El, small smile creeping across her features, cleared her throat. Chuck looked up at her, frowning, but also, uncertain. He didn't hate her, that's what mattered.

"El." She told him as he cradled his sore hand, however he did let out a small smile. El let down her guard _'these people aren't the enemy' _and a smirk graced her lips.

"Not so difficult." He told her, El rolled her eyes, grinning at him.

"Yeah, whatever."


	3. Chapter 3

"You have got to be kidding me." There was a moment of silence in which El gives Chuck a disbelieving look and he gave her this shit-eating grin which she's grown to hate, "You wait until _now_," El huffed, eyes lowering to focus on her mashed potatoes, rather than Chuck's stupid, smug face, "_the morning we start Officer Training_, to tell me this?" She paused for a moment, looking back up at him, where he's eating his breakfast with that stupid grin like the cat that got the cream. "Smug bastard." It was muttered under her breath, but she was smiling and it made Chuck snort with laughter.

"Tell me I'm wrong." He told her, and El rolled her eyes, scraping swirled patterns into the food before her.

"Just because your dad pilots Lucky Seven, doesn't mean you know everything about _being _a pilot." She told him, and gave him a '_so there_' look, picking up a small, soggy green-bean and popping it into her mouth. There was a moment, before Chuck raised his eyebrow, almost challenging her and El gave him a weird little not-smile. Then he laughed, shaking his head and El felt the tension drop, heaping the mashed potato onto her spoon.

"I grew up in this place. These walls are my home." His words were spoken in almost forcibly wistful way, his eyes roamed over the unsightly ceiling beams and dull, concrete walls, before they settled back onto her; glaring at him and shovelling mashed potato into her mouth. "I've seen older people than you go home in tears." His words were laced with something else, something unpleasant.

"Are you intentionally trying to scare me off? Because it won't work." El told him, dismissing the feeling, mouth half full of food. The unpleasant tone was dropped and his smile looked strained, as if he was trying not to laugh, and almost failing. But he managed to get his face in order, shrugging.

"Nah, I like you, El." He said, and El rolled her eyes.

"Thanks." Her tone was dry. He dipped his head in her direction, funny little smirk on his lips, and shoved his plate out of the way to rest his head on his arms, watching the wall and the passers by as they moved to do whatever it was they were assigned to do. There were quite a few older recruits giving the teens disdainful looks which they ignored.

"I hate Officer Training." He mumbled in her ear in order for the people around them not to hear. It tickled and El feels like she should snort with laughter from the absurdity of it all. The two of them sat at the back of the lecture hall for their first class on statistics and El poked him with her pen. "I know all of this stuff." He told her, after being mock offended for a few seconds.

"Yeah, well shut up, I don't." She hissed, shooting for stern. Chuck rolled his eyes but took out his own stylus, drawing on the side of his open document. The two of them were silent for the rest of the session, Chuck even begrudgingly taking notes on the tablet in front of him. They were dismissed by the teacher's words and it took less than a moment of El shutting down her laptop for Chuck to poke her back.

"Wanna do some training in the Kwoon Combat Room?" He asked. El tipped her head to the side, frowning in confusion.

"What?" She asked.

"We've got like an hour until the next class. Wanna practice fighting?" His eyes had a wicked gleam in them that pulled El to him like a beaker, the same gleam from the first day. Then it faded and he paused for a moment to add, "You do know _how _to fight, right?"

El scoffed, straightening her posture in a more dignified position, the two of them exiting the lecture hall and following him as he lead her through the twisting, turning corridors. "Of course," she can hear the snide, righteous asshole in her voice, "I've been working towards this for the past five years." There was a beat before she realised what she had said, unfortunately, he had realised too.

"What? Why?" He asked, turning suddenly, and El clamped her mouth shut tightly. "Come on, is this some bitter back story? Tell me." He wiggled his eyebrows at her and El shook her head, her finger tapping out a staccato beat against the back of her tablet as she walked, faster now, with Chuck keeping pace every step of the way. He kept asking her during the walk, catching the attention of several others who were making their way to the training room for extra practice, but thankfully, the walk was mercifully short.

The room was large by El's usual training area standards (her cramped little room which she shared with three other kids back in the orphanage), but still relatively small compared to photos she had seen of other areas. There was at least five other people practicing on their own, sticks in hand, practicing what looked like martial arts patterns of a type she had never seen."What the..." She mumbled, seeing the sticks lined up across one wall, with Chuck sizing up the three on the end, before grabbing the one furthest to the right, holding it as if it was a natural extension of his arm.

"Come on, pick yours." He told her, swinging the stick back and forth, as if warming up. El shuffled forwards, trying not to let her nervousness show, picking up the first stick before her. She watched him walk to the middle of the room, stand with stick held in both hands, feet shoulder width apart, and she tried to mirror him, the lingering feeling of doing _something _wrong in the pit of her stomach. His gaze lingered on her hands and he shifted his in a way that looked unnatural, but she didn't see his eyes or his smirk. Instead, she copied him, frowning at the unnatural twist of her wrist, and his smirk grew wider. He stuck forward with a quick blow, his hands adjusting at lightening speeds, and El had to move quickly to avoid being hit. She retaliated, her hands moving automatically, trying to awkwardly manoeuvre the stick until Chuck, with one sweeping move, caught the stick between her two hands with his own, pulling it from her grasp and catching it with his left hand.

"Show off." El muttered, trying not to be bitter but _who the fuck fought with sticks?_ Chuck shook his head, tossing her stick back to her. She caught it deftly because she may not fight with a stick, but she still had faster reflexes than most kids in the orphanage.

"Ok, so you need to stand more like this," He stood across from her, his legs shoulder width apart and stick held firmly in both his hands, leaning forward, the stick positioned to look more like a sword than to look like a hunk of wood. El tried to copy him, but couldn't get the grip right, hands still twisted awkwardly and legs were too close together. "No," Chuck sighed, an exasperated smile on his face, as he tapped her feet with his own so she moved them apart until they were shoulder width. He was in her personal space now, making her tense up, and he seemed not to notice. _Look him in the eye like an actual human being, El_, her mind hissed angrily, forcing her to look at him. "like a sword." He told her, demonstrating once more, she took this as an oppertunity to look at his hands rather than him, and correct her own grip. It didn't work. Chuck laughed.

"Well _sorry _I didn't have my dad holding my hand teaching me to hold a sword. Fucking 'Perfect Fighter Chuck' with his 'Perfect Fighter Dad'." El snapped, looking up at him. He was almost ten centimetres taller than her and she glowered up at him with anger at her own misgivings leaking out and poisoning him too. They both recoiled from that, El, once more realising she let part of her precious life slip, Chuck with a bitterness she couldn't identify, that she wasn't sure she wanted to.

He recovered first, his eyes narrowing, looking at her with a bitterness that came from the missing-parent situation. _Oh shit, you've done it now, _she thought. "Yeah well, princess, you'd better get someone to hold your hand and tell you everything's alright, 'cause I sure as _hell _ain't gonna do it." He spat, rising to his full height, shoulders pulled back.

_I literally crushed a man's skull with my fucking brass knuckles when he did more than cop a feel, do you wanna fucking go, pretty boy?_ The words pressed against her teeth, wanting to be spat, snarled, hissed at him, written across the walls in blood or black ink, precious scrawlings of her mind forever angry against the grey. But she was silent, fuming at him, sure, but silent. They had gained the attention of several of the other trainees, who watched, almost amused, as if hoping for the children to trip on their own egos.

"Then go." She told him, her mouth twisting into a bitter smirk that was in no way happy or even positive. He snorted with derision and El clenched her jaw.

"You're such a child." He hissed. They stood, almost nose to nose, looking into each other's eyes, daring the other to break, anger of two broken soldiers radiating from them in waves. El turned on her heel finally, storming from the room. She could hear Chuck throw his stick over to the wall, it clattered against the others, echoing in the silence. She didn't care. She held onto her stick with a white-knuckled grip, making her way back to her room. She slammed the door closed behind her, curled upon her bed with the stick pressed into her thigh, her stomach, her face, in the most uncomfortable way. She screamed into her pillow and held back her tears - _how could I be such a fucking idiot!? Stupid, never think before you speak! One fucking friend and you -_ because she still had class soon and she couldn't make it look like she cared about him. It had only been a week, after all, that they had known each other, a weak of smirks, mashed potatoes and arguing about Jaeger specs.

They sat at either ends of the front row and Chuck pretended El's eyes aren't red rimmed.


	4. Chapter 4

"Elleni?" El's eyes are dragged away from her own hands as her name is called, her name that felt like a knife against her skin, taunting her, but never enough to physically hurt her. She tried not to flinch as best she could, but of course, like fingernails against a chalkboard, the name ripped the visceral reaction from her, the twitch of her hand and head. She hoped Carmel, the Psych Analyst for the Sydney Shatterdome, didn't notice, but Carmel always notices and then asks questions like its her job… Which it sort of is. El's sure she noted it somewhere in her file, along with all of the other subconscious ticks and anxious tells she's developed through her years, that she knows Carmel must have written down somewhere, perhaps, labelled under 'NOT FIT FOR PILOTING'. Or maybe its just a one off thing. El isn't sure about herself, most of the time.

"Yes?" El blinked rapidly, trying to calm her nervously beating heart as today was the day. _The day_. She faced Carmel and smiled as bright as she could manage, her nervousness having developed an tight grip upon her vocal cords, climbing up her throat pressing down against her tongue, which made her feel slow and sluggish.

"This is your last session before you begin Drift Sync Testing, are you ready?" Carmel's voice is as neutral as she can possibly make it, but Carmel knew; Carmel knew everything about El and she didn't even seem to mind. El often mused how good it was to let her reality spill from her mind, helping sort through the sludge and seeing her troubles slip through her fingers; gone. Carmel was there for that, slipping through El's thoughts and feelings and smiling right back at the fluorescent mouths in El's head. She hadn't recommended for El to leave, not the bunker, not the program, not even her own office when El got emotional, so she must think El has what it takes to be a ranger (_see, Chuck knows nothing, _El thought bitterly). El was full of self doubt, something that had become a sort of commonality, a bleak precedent for her world. In that instance, she felt the terror of her drift partner finding out her past, her parents' deaths, her weapons and training, her real age, her own insecurities… She knew and trusted the people around her, her comrades, her friends. Every day she became closer to the other trainees, (the ones who didn't leave in tears, like Chuck said).

"I can't..." She struggled to select the correct word, her mouth sliding over several different ones - _do it, do anything, succeed_ - before she came to a concrete answer, "trust _myself_. I'm not strong enough." She mumbled, leaning forward with her elbows on her needs, going back to her lack of eye contact with Carmel, who let out a soft, warm laugh. El's eyes focused on her hands clasped, white knuckled before her. Carmel reached out with her dark-skinned hand to rest it on top of El's, slowly, so not to scare the child, like she was a frightened deer. Her voice was soft and comforting, trying its best to reach out to El's locked heart, to help her.

"El, you're stronger than you realise, your friends know this and _they _trust you." Carmel's words made El look up, honey coloured eyes looking into brown, shock in El's and understanding in Carmel's. There was a pause, and El could feel her heart beginning to lighten. "You've been through so much, so have all of these people. I know you may not see it, but they care about you, and I _know _you care about them." El struggled with words for a moment, something to agree, but instead looked down and made an affirmative noise in the back of her throat. "This is your last chance, El, to open up to someone completely, or leave."

There was a beat when everything Carmel was saying sunk in, the weight of everything. She was a fifteen year old girl risking her life to fight aliens. She was a fifteen year old girl who practiced knife fighting in her spare time. She was a fifteen year old girl who wanted to fight monsters but knew she was a monster inside. El just wanted to cry or run away or _something_ to get that stupid, broken look off her own face, away where people couldn't see it again. But she didn't, because in a fight or flight situation, El's always clawed her way to victory.

"You've managed to maintain good scores in the program, especially in the Jaeger engineering component." Carmel's tone is different this time, more factual, but also proud, "If you can make it through drift training, you should be allowed to continue as an engineer for the program." El felt her breath grow still in her throat as she turned, hopeful, her heart leaping and bounding with excitement, to Carmel. El's sudden, positively glowing aura was almost tangible, thick and sweet like honey, masking the bitter sting of her fear at letting herself be excited for something as small as hope.

"I can do that." The words tumbled from El's mouth, but she let them fall, not scrambling after them which happened more often than El would like to admit. She let in a sharp breath, the air whistling into her lungs where she had forgotten to breathe again. Her life was spent in the pursuit of piloting a Jaeger, the revenge she wanted for her parents, the revenge she wanted when she was robbed of her childhood, but she had doubted her abilities - especially concerning others. To know there was still a place for her if she couldn't… trust herself, a place that meant she could put her faith in the others to help on her behalf, that made her braver than anything else she had experienced at the academy. Carmel analysed the girl in front of her, a smile on her lips, that took only moments to form into a full-on grin.

"You were worried about not being good enough, about losing your new home." It wasn't a question, it was a statement, Carmel always seemed to know what El was thinking, even without the drift to tell her. "You're going to be fine." Carmel reassured the young ranger in training, before straightening up, flicking away a document on her tablet and smiling at El, a knowing gleam in her eyes. "I have your list of drift compatible partners, by the way, if that helps." El nodded wordlessly, smile still on her face, lighting up her features like the glow of a star, a glow of one who had found their place in life, her smile more genuine than it had been in so long. Until it was gone.

It was two girls El was close to, Mirra Oliver and Hannah Parkes, who were both twenty and tough as nails. She didn't mind the idea of drifting with them, they had become like best friends over the past eight weeks. But then - Chuck. Of course its Chuck.


	5. Chapter 5

She and Chuck didn't speak to each other in the Conn Pod. They barely looked at each other, which, of course, was pretty unsurprising as the eight weeks previous had passed with little more than awkward small talk and fighting for top scores in tests. El's combat had improved, or rather, he combat at that particular style had improved. The two, whether they wanted to admit it or not, seemed to be paired together more often than not, fighting silently, which contrasted with Chuck's personality and El's explosive temper, but there they would stand, focused on only each other.

(_Mirra once said it was like watching a ballet. El didn't even notice she spent hours watching his every move, mapping his body with her eyes, striking and blocking and tumbling without missing a beat or hitting the mat, like a pair of dancers with complete faith in each other. It occurred to her that he was doing the same thing too_).

Setting harness for test mode, two pilots on board." The Instructor reported back to the command office for the test, securing El and Chuck into their drive suits. They didn't smile at each other when they were welded into the drive suits, tense and ready, helmets pushed into their hands by the Conn Pod Instructor. There was an odd sensation of someone gripping her spine, pressing into the base of her skull through the plastic of the drive suit, something that made her uneasy. She put up with it, though, trying to focus on calming her mind, all the lingering fear from before her admission to Carmel still floating in the back of her head, how inadequate she felt compared to the other recruits with years on her, Chuck with his father in the program for years now, them being the only two teens left, the other washing out after only a week. _I can do this_. She repeated it over and over again in her mind, like a mantra, until it bounced and reverberated within her skull and made her feel slightly ill. _I can do this_.

"Let the memories wash over you. Don't chase the R.A.B.I.T. Focus on the Drift; the Drift is silence." The Instructor told them both, seriously, looking from one to the other, before the door to the simulation room opened and they were guided inside. It was large, with what looked to be a large window in front of them, but it appeared to be covered by some sort of material and El figured it was more like a television, for the simulations to occur through. There were two pilot areas, both with overhead displays with buttons and levers and if El hadn't been studying Conn Pod tech, she would have felt quite intimidated. On the whole, not a lot of this intimidated her, it was the fact that she would have to be in someone else's head.

The backs of their suits were attached to an arm extending from the ceiling and locked their feet to the pedal-looking things, El with some hesitation. She could feel her breath coming in short as her wrists were clipped with what looked like handcuffs, but with full mobility, making her feel trapped, _I can do this_. And they were each given a circular device for the arm they controlled (El was left, Chuck was right).

"_Tango Tasmania, securing pod, get ready for the drop._" A voice spoke in their ears and El flinched, Tango Tasmania was the name of the simulation Jaeger, named after the nickname of another Jaeger that had been destroyed in battle a few years earlier. "_Secure the Conn Pod_." She reminded herself that it was just a simulation, that she was OK, and it was all a test. _This is the endgame, El. This is what you want_.

"Tango Tasmania, release for drop." Chuck pressed a button above his head, speaking to the Instructor, or whoever they had simulated to be the technician. Chuck was the dominant part of the brain, which she honestly didn't mind. He seemed like he could handle this.

"Wow." El muttered, a weightless feeling overtaking her as they dropped down, attaching to the head of the simulated Jaeger. She and Chuck, for the first time in almost two months, shared a genuine smile, excitement crackling in the air like static. Suddenly, she didn't feel as scared anymore. _I trust you_ - the words were on the tip of her tongue, but she realised all of that would be conveyed in the Drift. Because she did, for all the horrible things she thoughts sometimes, trust him with her life.

"_Initiating pilot-to-pilot protocol._" The instructor told them, as the simulation officially began, the large display in front of them whirring to life, the large metal doors of the shatterdome opening; a sunny summer afternoon, tide lapping at the Jaeger's ankles, Kaiju in the distance, looming towards them. At the sight of the Kaiju, El tipped to the balls of her feet, excited and ready to go, but thought better of it, moving to focus her mind, to steady herself and be as open as possible before calibrating the control pad above her.

"Tango Tasmania, ready and aligned, sir." Chuck told them when El nodded. They heard the murmur of technicians over the other end of the line, but was a pause before a new voice came over the intercom.

"_Team, this is Marshal Hercules Hansen, prepare for neural handshake._" Chuck froze, eyes glassy and lips pressed so tightly together that they were white and bloodless. The Instructor began to count down from fifteen, until the neural handshake was initiated. She would have asked him what was wrong, but she would know soon enough.

There was the gut wrenching feeling of both being sucked out of her own head and someone pushing in, memories whirling past her, like water from a fountain. Eyes wide open, she watched the flood of memories, both hers and Chuck's.

_A little girl being held by one of her father's arms, looking up with wonder as he swooped a model plane around, the two laughing and talking._

_A young boy at a barbeque, eating a sausage sandwich and laughing at his dad with tomato sauce on his shirt._

_A young girl, listening by the door of her parent's room, mother and father screaming at one another as the girl cried silently._

_A young boy sitting on the counter of a second hand shop, his mother bagging some clothes for a customer, and letting him put the money in the cash register._

_A young girl, sitting in front of her television with her father, eyes glued to the screen as 'Trespasser', the first Kaiju, tore through San Francisco, her father flinching as he heard the door slam closed, signaling the arrival of the girl's mother._

_The boy buried his sobbing face into the fur of his young bulldog, feeling the Earth rumble beneath him as the Kaiju got closer._

_El could feel her heart speed up, see the glowing jaws of 'Hurricane' bearing down on her, her mother and father, mother still with her frown lines and her father's tired eyes, looking up at her as they fell. El didn't scream, she didn't cry, she ran. She ran and ran until her legs couldn't support her anymore - I'll kill it! I swear I'll kill it! I'll destroy them all, fucking Kaiju scum! _Her memories and what she was actually saying began to meld together, making her head spin, seeing rubble before her and a one-eyed porcelain doll. _I will fucking rip out their throats -_

"_Elleni is severely out of alignment!_" The voice came over the intercom, which to which Chuck snapped back, his own heart rate elevated with the fear and overwhelming rage that he and El were sharing.

"El! This isn't real. Don't chase the R.A.B.I.T!" He shouted, trying to keep the anger out of his voice and hardly managing. She was worse than he had really suspected. But El could hear him, somewhere in the back of her head, and she tried as hard as she could to let go of the memory, to let it fade away...

They both watched the dropping of the bomb from different angles.

_There was a boy, older now, watching his dad and his uncle sign up for the Jaeger academy, a sense of abandonment in the pit of his stomach, which he thought was unreasonable, its not like the academy would become their entire lives._

_There was a girl, older, quieter, less enthusiastic, going into shops and staring longingly at the sharp pocket knives, _sharp enough to cut Kaiju hide? _she wondered, distantly._

_The boy realised that yes, the academy had become his father's whole, life, and now he was stuck in the Sydney Shatterdome, waiting for his father to come back from being deployed in Hong Kong. It was alright, though, because a girl about his age who lost her loved ones too._

_The girl is older, sitting at her desk while three younger girls are having a tea party behind her. She's looking through the newspaper, circling all the advertisements for any sort of fight training._

_The boy doesn't see the girl often, her name is Mako and she doesn't talk much, but she likes Max and she's good company. She says she's started training in secret, she wants to be a pilot. The boy marvels at it, before deciding that honestly, that's what he wants to do too._

_The girl watches programs about Jaegers until she's sleep deprived and the caregivers at the orphanage begin to worry about her. She still spends at least an hour a day practicing her martial arts, and one of her teachers said he would teach her to street fight if she wanted._

_The boy sneaks from the shatterdome often now, heading down the gym or the library to read the books on strategy; he knows how tough it is, despite the distance between he and his dad, he can tell._

_The girl watches the Jaegers fight the Kaijus and an unbridled hatred pours through her, seeing the Kaijus again and again. Her teacher gave her a set of knuckle dusters for her birthday and she can't contain her excitement. There's not a lot that makes her excited these days, just the simmering hatred towards kaijus that has become the constant in her life. Her violent desires cause her to grin and the other children thinks she's crazy. They don't understand._

_The boy watches the girl go into her new room at the academy and flop onto her bed, too small to be the proper age, but brimming with enthusiasm that a more experienced liar like himself can see right through. She's bitter and scared and he likes her because she's raw energy and potential. Even if his dad doesn't give a fuck about him, off being Marshal, he's got Mako and Max and now, he thinks he might have El._

El felt as if she was drowning, trying desperately to hold onto some memory, trying to cling to her happier past, but she saw then, her father's bruises and tired eyes and her mothers clenched fists and angry glares - was it really a happier life? The pain of their combined parental absence leaves them shocked its all El can do to rip off her helmet and slump forward, still attached to the metal arm from the ceiling, her stomach churning. She's certain once she got out, she would vomit into the nearest available trashcan.

"Elleni! Are you OK?" Its Chuck, unclipping himself and helping her out. She stumbled for a moment, not realising she was crying until he tried to wipe her tears away.

"F-fuck off." She breathed, but he didn't, he didn't even look hurt by it. She was scared, so scared, and he knew that now. "I'm only fifteen." She mumbled, feeling the beginnings of a panic attack rising, but promptly collapsed, out cold, as it all tumbled down upon her.

The Drift wasn't silence. The Drift was silence and screams and the happiness of a thousand years and the sadness of a thousand deaths and loving more completely than you ever thought you could. The Drift was trust, trusting yourself to another person, completely.


End file.
